How to handle LaTeX/PDF doc reviews? - pdf

I am a Ph.D student, and I usually write articles which are later proof-read by my supervisor. I usually do it in LaTeX and reviews are done to the PDF outputs in Adobe Reader itself. There are mostly grammatical ones and mostly I miss prepositions and conjuctions in fast writing. To re-phrase everything I have to manually enter everything in my LaTeX script again.
This seems to be hell lot of work and this goes on multiple times sometimes. Is there any software in current world that makes the task easier? For example, if a text stuck out for grammar errors and suggested alternatives, can I accept the changes to replace old one with new phrase or sentence and also able to blank out the striked text. Please suggest me a tool which really makes my life easier.

You may want to take a look at the following link. It has some good information about version controlling.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Collaborative_Writing_of_LaTeX_Documents

You could attach the LaTeX sources to the PDF (with the attachfile2 package), so reviewers can directly edit the source and send that back. Or you try to accept comments to the PDF, but currently only Adobe Reader and Foxit allow that - and not on Linux.

Related

Zebra .zpl file backwards to designer

I am still learning zpl. I have created some simple labels using the Zebra designer and converted them to zpl files and added to printers. Now, I have been tasked to update existing labels for some of our customers and I do not have the file available in the designer. I have been successfully been able to do things like update a barcode type and add a field by directly updating the script. But, the changes the users want would be much easier if I could use designer (I know that is like cheating!). But, the timeline I have is short. I have found some older questions out there that say this is not possible, so I thought I would check to see if it may now be possible to use the script on the zebra printer, and convert it to text that the designer will recognize.
I would like to mention that the printers I work with are physically located in other countries, with most inside restricted manufacturing production areas. When testing, I have to coordinate with users who have access to these printers. This means that printing one label, and then receiving a picture of this label can take several hours. I am still waiting for results of one test we did yesterday! Thanks to this site, I have found a site on line that will kind of mimic the label, but the actual printed copy is the best test.
Thanks for your attention.
You cannot import the ZPL back into a designer, but there are two tools that are very helpful when you don't have a printer to test with:
Labelary Online ZPL Viewer
Chrome ZPL Plugin
I've used both and have been pleased with the results, but your experience may vary depending on the complexity of the label.

PS PDF Conversion text issues

having a bit of a weird issue that I can't for the life of me figure out how to solve. It may just be a blond moment on my part but I've been scratching my head with this one for a while.
Basically I've made a load of PS PDF files in CS6 and used Acrobat Pro DC to merge the files into one big file. Granted this may not be the most efficient way to work with PDFs but it seemed like the way that made the most sense to me. Anyway I've been doing this for a while and I've not really had any issues however when I did it today I hit a little snag. Several pages in the document come out with their text all mangled. The odd thing is that the text appears to look fine in the DC viewer but if I print them out or view them in Windows Reader they look deformed.
I've tried a load of different ways to try to solve the problem but I can't really find the answer I'm looking for. I've tried a number of different file formats and different printing settings (which I now realize are useless as it's messed up in Reader as well as in print). I've also tried rasterizing the text which seems to work but obviously the text becomes unselectable in the PDF views so I'd prefer to use this as a last resort and find the actual root of the problem.
I can only assume that it's an issue on photoshops side as the majority of the pages come out fine and they all use the same base template and same fonts.
Any insight into this will be really helpful.

PDF Manipulation with Adobe's Form Input Fields

I am trying to simplify a process where I currently use my hand calculations of X & Y Co-Ordinates of each value. Which works fine, but is causing me a lot of pain as I have to do quite a number of PDF's.
I know that I can open a PDF and insert "input fields" within Adobe Acrobat Pro, which it would be great if I could use PHP to connect to those input fields and insert a value from a PHP Form.
WORKFLOW::
PHP FORM >>> PHP PROCESSING ENGINE >>> TO FINAL PDF WITH FORM VALUES IN THE LOCATION OF THE ADOBE INPUT FIELDS.
If someone has some information on something like this it would be much appreciated.
I know this is not a direct answer to your question, but maybe it will save you some time.
We tried doing something similar and ended up abandoning the idea of doing this programatically ourselves. It was much more cost-efficient to just buy this product: http://www.evermap.com/automailmerge.asp?gclid=CPfW44DNsKYCFULNKgodyV6Rnw
as the cost of paying me to write similar functionality was not a good ROI.
However, a similar (but not exact duplicate) qhestion has been asked here, and you may be able to get ideas from it.
How to do mail merge on top of a PDF?
Your PHP script could generate an FDF that your PDF could import and obtain values from.

How to implement an NSTextView that performs on-the-fly markup to RTF conversions

I'm trying to build an NSTextView that can take "marked up" input that is automatically translated into beautiful RTF-style text while the user types.
The idea is to let the user enter text in "plain text" format, but to "beautify" it on the spot, e.g.
H1 A quick list:
* first item
* second item
would be translated into a first line with a header font, followed by a bulleted list.
I have found plenty of potential ways of doing this, but the Text System is incredibly complicated (with reason) and I don't want to start "cooking my own" if there is already something suitable built-in. BTW I would be happy with a Snow Leopard only API.
The first thing I thought of was "data detectors", but I can't find a public API for doing this.
Having reached the end of the road with that, I turned to the new "Text Input Sources API". This does all kinds of things, but the "data-driven input methods" section of the WWDC 2006 presentation "Take Charge of the Text Input" seems interesting in my context. Beyond that single presentation slide however nothing seems to exist anywhere, so it's a bit of a dead end again.
Finally, I had a look at the NSSpellChecker class which is also supposed to offer completion features and automatic corrections.. but I'm not sure how this could be re-purposed for my requirements either.
At the moment, I'm tempted to just re-parse the entire NSTextStorage manually and make the changes myself when the user stops typing.. but I'm sure there are cleverer heads around this forum..
Any advice or pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
Neither data detectors nor the spell checker are appropriate for this task. Assuming you're just looking for a way to pass the input to a parser/formatter you already have, interfacing with the text system isn't too difficult. You're on the right track with handling the editing to NSTextStorage.
Along those lines, there's no need to re-parse the entire thing when the user stops. The text system sends you the modified range and gives you the opportunity to act on those changes (and even reject them out of hand). Since all changes funnel through this (typing, pasting, dropping...), this is the point where you want to intercede.
Because you're dealing with headings and bulleted lists, I'd get the enclosing paragraph of the modified range. This gives you a nice, round unit of work that is easily discovered and perfectly fits what you're trying to accomplish.
Good luck!

is it possible to automatically purge a Word document of all scripts and other malicious threats?

reputedly, it is possible to make a "malicious" Word document. Maybe using embedded VB script? Anyway, not sure. My question is, is it possible to make an app that safely scrubs all such insertions from a .doc file? Of course, preferably this app should work without actually opening that file in Word application since presumably that may be sufficient for the machine to get damaged.
Is there something like that out there already? Is this even a problem worthy of discussion or in reality there is nothing really malicious that can be done using the Word documents distributed online?
ADDED LATER: johnnyArt, yes, and when you get dirt on your clothes, make sure to go to mommy and tell her about it. Mommy knows best! As a computer programmer, I am interested in learning more about how the world works, including how the world of .doc files and their embedded malicious scripts works. As for using the antivirus and anti-spyware, I will handle these issues without your precious advice. As will, probably, most other users of this forum.
You should scan the file with your antivirus/spyware of choice.
My advice is, if it has malware in it, it's not worth "cleaning" it for use.
Get yourself a clean copy somewhere else.